adiós, au revoir, tchau!

Final week, final blog!

In a blink of an eye, I have somehow managed to read 11 books; it certainly doesn’t feel like it somehow. I have a feeling that this blog is going to go over the word count so I’m going to jump straight into it. First off, to get the negativity out of the way, my least favourite book of this semester was Combray. There’s actually multiple reasons for this. I think that since it was a chapter of a really long story, like we only read to a certain chapter so for this story overall it felt a lot more confusing, in the sense that I can’t tell what the point is for laying the story down in the beginning since we didn’t follow up the rest of the book. I also didn’t really enjoy the writing style and I feel like looking back the highlight of the book is eating a Madeline and having flashbacks with is lowkey boring (oops) compared to all the other books. Like all the other books gave me something stronger, more interesting to work with. Also this book was the first book we read so maybe it’s just my memory of it being more cloudy. But yea, those are my personal reasons, which I would like to emphasize doesn’t really speak about the quality of the book- it’s more of a personal experience kind of thing.

I have a couple favourites of this semester. honourable mentions include The Lover, Time of the Doves, Hour of the Star, Shrouded Women, Agostino (I know I’m listing all of them but I actually really enjoyed them all almost equally). For most of these, I found the story and writing to be intriguing and the discussion of the books to be enjoyable. I think my favourite is a tie between Money to Burn and Faces in the Crowd. Money to Burn kind of felt like it had it all- a somewhat thrilling story, based on an interesting contextual background especially since its based on a real event, interesting themes and amazing execution (moral corruption, money, societal values, cycles of violence, even political ideology at times), and creative writing style choices (changing to pov of interview pieces and police reports, references and images invoking Christ, etc.) that were really intelligent and thoughtful choices. All of these elements made reading and especially dissecting the book and discussing it really enjoyable. Faces in the Crowd is my other favourite primarily because of the writing- I would say reading experience wise this one was my favourite. the language and writing was really beautifully constructed and I guess this one also felt a bit more poetic but not over the top which I enjoyed. I also feel like the story telling 3 stories at once and the ending of the book where settings merge was super interesting. This book also grappled with interesting themes in really intricate ways, with blending the real and not real, the idea of truths, folding time, all of it are really hard concepts to grapple and talk about, so I feel that Luiselli actually did a really stellar job doing it all.

Looking back at my first blog post, I said that “I foresee a lot of exposure to texts rooted in various regions featuring different kinds of stories- some great, most weird, very few unenjoyable”. This is so spot on I was practically a soothsayer. I will say that surprisingly this semester had a weaker dose of learning about the backgrounds the novels are rooted in compared to my experience taking the Span 312 class. Also I just saw that Daniel the TA commented that there might be something Borgian esque about some of the books we read and damn he really was warning me. Thanks for that Daniel. Standing at this point in time, I look back now and realized that I’ve actually changed and learned a lot more about reading from all the experiences so far in this course. I really feel like I read somewhat differently, and learned to appreciate different things. I think if I ran into Agostino in the wild I would’ve called the author an incest weirdo and rated it 1 star on Goodreads. But this course has taught me to learn to look more into the void, and appreciate and understand whatever might be staring at you back.

Ok this blog is long enough- time for the last question to you all. I bring back the worst man awards now that we have seen all the worst men this course has to offer. Who is truly the worst and why? please let me know. Cheers everybody!

 

Word of the day: phantasmagoria (Faces in the Crowd)

Hello everybody- the book this week was Luiselli’s “Faces in a crowd”, which I don’t even really know how to describe the plot…think ghosts but not really, a wife with a husband and 2 children but not really, and a girl working in a publishing firm as a translator that’s a bit obsessed with this dead author.

Im not exactly sure how this came to be but for every week I can sort of mentally imagine the story, and it was always tinged in yellow a, bid faded and fuzzy like how old TV was. But this weeks reading was finally in colour, and also above 840p resolution wise. Maybe it has to do with the electronic copy of the book being a super crisp white, but I think it mostly has to do with the tone of the writing now, as we are at the last book of the semester, meaning it’s a lot more recent. But even then, with the choppiness of the book and jumps between first person narration, none of the mental images I have count as “coherent” either.

The husband and wife of this book is quite interesting to me because I find that building a house (architect-ing it, like designing it) feels quite similar to writing a book in some ways- to design the foundation of the story, its progression, overarching themes and writing styles; each of it is an element to build a coherent story just like you would build a house with its foundations, walls, stairs etc. But at one point, the narrator compared her work to her husbands (an architect) and says “I can’t make spaces from nothing. I can’t invent. I only manage to emulate my ghosts, write the way they used to speak, not make noise, narrate out phantasmagoria” (to save you the Google, it means a constant shifting complex succession of things seen or imagined- which also applies to faces you would see in a crowd wink wink). I would think that any sort of writing is invention in a way, but given the shifting perspectives and stories with this book I sort of get where the author is coming from as stories seem as if they are from ghosts both real and not real at once. 

This book is one of the few books from this class that I would’ve picked up for myself to read (the other is probably The Lover) and I actually quite enjoyed it- both the book itself and the experience reading it. Also as a complete side note, from the GLIMPSES into the wife’s familial life, I finally realized that I really just want to read a normal book in this class for once ???????????? I forgot how much I missed reading a book where the ordinary things happen (although this book is only 1/3 that; normal and not normal at the same time).

my question for all this week is: if you were to write your own book somewhat based on yourself and somewhat fictionalize it, what would you choose to write about?

Why are we reading fan fiction (The book of chameleons)

The book we are reading this week was most definitely chosen as a personal hate crime against me. Are you having a giggle prof. Beasley? are having a little laugh? Im certainly not laughing after reading this book. This book first started with a quote from Borges- that he would perhaps like to be reborn as something/someone else. I didn’t even think much of the quote- I was too terrified by his presence and the prospect of his stench latching onto this book. For those that don’t know, he actually kidnapped my mom drove over my cat beat my grandma up and held me at gunpoint to read his little book known as Labyrinths which felt like eternal damnation in hell. You can fact check this with Alizey- she also had to read this book. And I had to read the entire book assigned to us this week only to find out in the end that all this time I was reading the thoughts of a gecko that was supposed to be Borges reincarnated, hence why I think this book counts as fan fiction since Agualusa is technically just making shit up about a once real person (as opposed to Borges who only made literal SHIT up). Borges sin was not that he didn’t love, it was that he wrote labyrinths and thus had to be subject to being in a geckos body and dies because he got jumped by a scorpion.

I guess my shitty men of the week this week would be Borges I dont care if he’s not actually a character this week ok he technically is. Anyways I’m done being dramatic about Borges now.

There was a quote from this book that I found really fascinating: “do you think life expects us to be compassionate? I don’t believe so. What life expects of us is that we celebrate. Let’s return to the fish: If you were this fish, would you prefer me to be eating you with sadness or with delight?”. It really is a loaded quote with much to think about, obviously because it probes for the purpose of life and all. I feel like different people would have different answers to this question- after all there are a lot of vegans out there.  I honestly would rather the people eating me to eat with delight, so I guess in some ways I also belief that life is about celebration and experiences and feeling everything. Not that there isn’t a place for compassion, I just think that there’s always going to be much pain in the world. And for those that are in pain, you still need to figure out a way to celebrate your own life both in spite and because of it.

This book featured a lot of different themes- deception being the biggest one, especially with the whole name of the book (Chameleon but in reality its a gecko), Backmann (his double deception), Angela with her background, Ventura with his profession, etc. etc. But I think even beyond the characteristics of the people, this book largely deals with dancing between the bounds of reality and falsehood, truth and lies. This is seen repeatedly between the book, especially in instances where we can’t even be really sure what parts are just a dream versus what parts are reality. As the gecko says, “My dreams are almost always more lifelike than reality” (46). This is quite debatable considering the geckos position as well. The main interactions he actually has with Felix (beyond being a voyeur in his life) happens within his dream. In this sense, we can’t really definitively say which one is the gecko’s reality- when things are actually happening, and what actually feels more real to him. The book actually takes this a step even further too. At one point in the novel, Ventura talks about what another writer said: “I lie with joy! Literature is the only chance for a true liar to attain any sort of social acceptance” (68). Isn’t every story at the end of the day just a lie? it’s a tale about things that didn’t actually happen. Some could say that this book itself is a deception- a fictitious tale about a fake man even with a background rooted in culturally relevant events. To me, this sort of runs parallel with Ventura’s job- to change their genealogy, not necessarily the action of the characters. But a beat later, the writer says “truth is a superstition” (68).  The way I take this, if you believe it to be true, then it is real to you- this applies even to the characters in this book, which while obviously are fictional, I find it disingenuous to characterize them as “not real”. They are real, because we believe them to be real, to actually carry something, and that is what a superstition is most the time. The gecko said to Ventura in a dream later on: “You invented him, this strange Jose Buchmann, and now he’s begun to invent himself. Its like a metamorphosis…a reincarnation…Or rather: a possession”. When I read this, I found this quite funny, because the exact same thing can be said about the gecko; Agualusa invented him-its a reincarnation of Borges in Gecko..or more specifically a possession of Borges’ soul in the gecko’s body. But once the reader sees him, believes in this truth of the character, he begins to invent himself- the author no longer holds jurisdiction over who this character is. I guess to me, the lesson at the end of the day is that we all hold our individual truths- and many times, there are a lot of lies, a lot of contradictions within us and honestly, dishonesty with yourself to some extent. But that doesn’t make us any else false or any less real. The chance for reinvention is still there.

My question to you all this week is, if you were the fish, which way would you rather people ate you? With delight or with sadness?

Money to Burn: the real homosexual agenda

The reading this week, Money to Burn, is one of the longer readings so far in the course (at around 200 pages which is still relatively short if I’m recalling back to Span312 where we once read a 400+ page book). However, because it its style of writing, reading the book felt a lot swifter as it feels a lot more reminiscent of more recent contemporary books. I think that the author having a background in journalism did contribute a lot to how the book came to be (jumping between times and perspectives from witness statements, memories past, or reports from prison), which felt a lot more like piecing together different pieces of the story. In some ways, I feel that it also contributes to a lot more confusion in trying to filter out the truth of the situation (is there even one? I guess that is also a question) especially when most of the time when the gang is talking they are high on some sort of drugs.

I think the other peculiar aspect of this book is the focus of the narrative- I feel like a lot of robbery stories or crime stories focus a lot on the process of actually committing the crime and not have the bulk of the story dedicated to aftermath, that being the police chase down. I feel like this notion is true across similar stories in the genre like in peaky blinders and such. Although, this book did remind me a lot more about the show Narcos, since it also has the story focus on the police chasing down the criminal (Pablo Escobar) in the aftermath of him becoming a drug lord and honestly many elements of that story feel sort of similar in some ways, especially with the focus on the psychological disposition of the criminals.

Commenting on the shitty men category once again, I feel like on paper this book should take the cake for the worst there is so far- the killing of so many people (which included a LOT of innocent people), raping, stealing, like to be honest if we are being fair here they are probably the worst. But I somehow don’t find myself feeling that way. the tone of the book makes me not feel the actions behind them so much, and I guess that might be the authorial intent to some degree- none of the crimes committed really feel that personal- not in the way that makes my BP rise when I read a book about another abusive husband. And maybe just that- it not feeling personal on their end, whether about the violence, the abuse, or burning the money, means that it is the worst crime above all.

Question to all this week: what do you think happened to Malito? in the epilogue they mention different possible endings- do you believe one of them or believe something else entirely?

I too, would cry if I was sleeping with children (The Lover)

“very early in my life it was too late”.

I feel like that quote in itself really encapsulates the tone of the book very well- the moodiness of the book, to the writing style being a sort of recollections of instances in her life past but sort of looking at it sometimes as if from a third person kind of view? Either way, this writing style was very Lana del Rey of her. This book heavily emanates a sense of melancholic nostalgia to me.

My feelings for this book is a warped one to some degree. I have first heard of this book from another source in a book review- as I believe for one reason or another its been quite popular recently and sort of exists in the same literary canon as Lolita, Norwegian Wood, Breasts and eggs,  as “modern classics” to read. So I did choose to read this book with some knowledge of what it would be about, and I sort of came to see this book outside the more academic context and saw it through the lens of “personal enjoyment” like a book you would pick up to read as a pass time. Which I feel like I can say now that this book does not suit those circumstances- pedophilia does not work as light reading.

On another note, this weeks shitty man award goes to the older brother of the book. I think that there’s enough shitty men in every single book so far that its probably worthwhile to hold a shitty man award by the end of the semester to see who can duke it out and win the title for the shittiest man of all. I wanted to beat the shit out of the older brother in this book really bad so I probably would vote for him as being the worst. And I feel like that says a lot when theres a literal pedophile in this book.

Now that I think about it, titling this book The Lover kind of feels like one sick joke. She states in the book that she doesn’t love him, and that his feelings of fear are too great to be love. So where exactly is the love in this book? Her family dynamics is also a big oof; I kept on sighing whenever they were mentioned. However, I guess I see more love in her relationship with her mother- she is after all just a girl obsessed with her own mothers unhappiness- as I would argue is often the case with eldest daughters in immigrant families.

My question to everyone this week is: out of all the shitty men this class has seen so far, which one do you think is the worst and why?

The Hour of the Star: REST IN POWER MACABEA

Is a girl not allowed to like Coke in peace??? Is a girl not allowed to have some blood on her underwear??? Why did she have to die???? As much as the plot and writing of this book pained me to read, I actually enjoyed it a lot this week, and that is not because it’s only 77 pages long <3 . While the writing of the book initially bored the shit out of me because that man just won’t stop yapping about anything and everything, I think even beyond the writing of the book, the construction of the book is worthy of greater examination and praise. Because how is there an author that is female writing as someone that is male that is writing about someone that is female? The story of Macabea is also being part of a larger story or narration of people like Rodrigo who look at Macabea- so it really is a story within a story leaving a lot of layers to unpack. From this, I guess I have to not complain about his yapping because without his yapping I would not be able to clock his personality, and the larger purpose this characterization serves in dissecting class and gender within this book through his narration of a character like Macabea. I still think he’s an asshole though.

In response to the feedback from last lecture, I will attempt to make my reflections and comments more true to my personal feelings when reading this book. And additionally I will try to keep my complaints for  male characters to a minimum. But what can I say, this class and its choice of books almost resembles gender studies so we always have a lot to say. Here is my male character complaint of the week: There is a special place in hell for people that have the name Olimpico like if your name is Olimpico I already know you are up to no good.

To summarize my personal thoughts on this book, God gives his strongest battle to his strongest soldiers; the last one Macabea succumbed to is one no one can defeat (I’d like to see you not die from getting hit by a car like her)- so in some ways, this book is a testament to her strength in spite, or even maybe because of her circumstances, which is a point I think the narrator intentionally conceals / is ignorant to in some aspects.

This week my question to you all is: What is your take on the intended impacts of having Macabea die in the end?

 

The Time of The Doves

From only the first few pages in, I already felt the effect of Rodoreda’s writing style- many instances seem like a whirlwind or a snapshot of events, with the narration of someone who sort of seems like they’re always rushing to a get to their point yet they also seem to be constantly rambling about something. Particularly for Natalia’s point of view, a lot of times it almost seems as if life is just happening TO her- like all these events, even the more mundane ones, are like cards that are just being dealt to her and she just happened to be there. I mean once the war starts this is obviously the case but even before this, in the most normal day to day occurrences, she speaks as if things were sort of being done “to” her, and I guess it really does translate a certain sense of vulnerability and I guess helplessness in a lot of situations she is in. I think this feeling is both relevant in the context of gender as well as class.

To be honest, I accidentally confused this novel to be another where the quick summary was about a female character being constantly physically abused by their husband (I think it might’ve been an old novel for the last RMST class or something) so that sort of impacted my view of Quimet from the get go (as in I hated tf outta him whenever he showed up even when he didn’t really do anything yet), but after I read the part where he died I got really confused and went back to check and realized my mistake. So all this is to sort of preface that I might’ve have a warped opinion on him. But between Natalia and Quimet’s relationship, I found that this helpless tone of the narration really highlighted the gender roles within their relationship, and to some degree I feel that it is because of the position Natalia was in that in a lot of ways shapes her voice in the novel. Like she isn’t able to just tell her husband “I don’t want those damn birds in the house anymore”, she has to go and secretly get rid of them in her own ways. So the emotional tone of this story I think conveyed really well the positions that Natalia was in, wrestling with one horrible thing after another.

My question to all this week is: Do you think this was the saddest story we have read by far? if yes why, and if no which one was it for you?

Black Shack Alley- Colonialism and Racism

I can’t quite believe that just last week we were talking about incest and now we are making a sharp turn towards racism and colonialism. Black Shack Alley is one of the stand out novels that I have enjoyed so far in this class. This reading feels a lot more reminiscent of common literary novels that we would feature in middle school or high school, not merely because it concerns race and colonialism, but because it offers a unique perspective and portrayal whilst still highly relevant to the setting and topic of the novel. I think that the author’s writing style is very powerful and vivid especially in his depiction of the of emotional truths to the story (for lack of a better word) that goes beyond just language to evoke imagery or to paint a picture ; he seems to have this ability to envelop the reader into the moment and I feel like considering the message and setting of the book, that is a very praise worthy feat. I feel like in this case, authenticity in experiences carries the bulk of the messaging, and thus a lot of the messages in the book need not be a direct finger point yet it still maintains the same effect.

There were a lot of parts of this book that were really striking to me. One of the many memorable quotes to me was “I already knew by intuition that the devil, misery, and death were more or less the same evil individual, who persecuted the blacks above all. And I wondered in vain what blacks could have done to the devil and to the béké to be so oppressed by both.” which was a thought by Jose when he was asking questions to Médouze. I feel like no words can ever describe the sadness you feel when you hear something like that, especially from a CHILD. As if the treatment would in any way ever be self-inflicted. I was reading up on some background for the book, and I found that the author only passed away in 2006 (and that the book is somewhat based on his own life and experiences). I think colonial history as it has been taught often seems like something of the past, without acknowledgement that it still controls the power dynamics of the world today and the conditions of colonialism for a lot of countries still remain basically the same regardless of legality. This is similar to how at the time when Jose was still at the plantation, slavery was technically abolished however the material conditions of the place remained largely the same.

A question to everyone this week: how has education played a role in your reckoning of social positioning within your ethnic background? I’m curious, because coming from an Asian immigrant household education is basically everything and the cultural messaging is very strong, and I find that to be a noteworthy topic within the book as well which made me curious about others.

 

Agostino – Freud enters the chat

Show of hands who here was ever thirsting after their mother? Hopefully nobody raised their hand, but our main character this week, Agostino, can certainly not say the same.

I can’t believe the start of this book started like it did. I’m actually a little bit traumatized, but I guess obviously not as bad as Agostino was traumatized on the boat ride home with his mom and the young man. I feel like all of us (especially as we grow up) really rebel against imagining our parents as any sort of potential sexual beings- the mere thought of it grosses us out. That’s why it alarmed me so much to see Agostino interact or describe his mom as such. So I don’t really know what to make of his gradual descent from seeing his mom through a more filial lens which gradually turned more and more sexual. Before the whole incest thing really went into 5th gear, I thought that his mother’s actions were quite peculiar, this sort of looseness and unabashed behaviour, but now looking back, its hard to tell if his mother lacked this sort of sense of boundary or that the narration was a bit deceptive to reveal I guess the subconscious thoughts that Agostino didn’t really put a name to just yet.

As hard as it is to move on from talking about potential incest, there’s something else about this book that caught my attention. The rustle and tussle of the male friendships within this book is something that fascinates me and I think I see it sometimes in real life too. I don’t think the relationship between these young boys are representative of all or even most young male friendships, but this sort of crude and tough wrestling into a social hierarchy seems quite common among younger males, especially as I recall my experiences in middle school. The reason why this intrigues me is not only because the female equivalent is LARGELY different, but also the actual psychological effects in my view are quite worth looking into; I feel like this might be how inferiority complexes develop.

In some sense, I think that all of us can relate to Agostino in some ways (obviously not in the incestuous way, hopefully). I personally really connected with his emotions about losing your identity whilst not having acquired a new one just yet, and how lost that makes you feel in the moment to have to be suspended in the air like that, not yet knowing what pieces will fall into place.

This week my question to you all is: What do you think referring to his mother as “Big” means in this novel? What does it signify or how does it serve the author’s purpose?

The Shrouded Woman – The Feminine Perspective

The Shrouded Woman by Bombal was this weeks required reading, which is sort like a series of vignettes inspired one by one by different people who have come to visit this dead woman at her funeral, and is then told from her perspective. I think just the premise of this kind of novel seems to be a pretty popular choice somewhat by writers, as popular books even nowadays seem to feature that sort of exploration, such as The Midnight Library. One thing that is different though is that the intention behind recounting your life and I guess the overarching message as different authorial intents kind of leads the readers to different conclusions. For examples, a lot of the times authors sort of loom the question of “what would you have done differently?” or “What are your regrets?” or “What are the final lessons you actually learn looking at your life to gain peace?” over our heads as the main character sort of gets this revelation in the face of death. However, for this book, I sort of feel like this books focus was about honesty. I think in many ways it works to capture the authenticity in Ana Maria’s thoughts, beliefs, and most importantly emotions, even though at time they may be immature, immoral or whatever that might be. Point is that I don’t think she is trying to curate this image of herself, or what she “means” to be to prove a point. I think the portrayal of her authentic experience sort of utilizes this structure in a different way, sort of like an answer to the question: what was a woman’s life like during this time and place? What could she possibly be thinking about? How would she feel about this topic? It sort of works to answer this question about identity more.

One thing that particularly stood out to me is that the construction of the novel is about delving into moments of her life again, but the centre of the narrative is very very concentrated on this sort of nuclear family and their family business. I think a lot of times it is true that female authors put a much heavier emphasis on the relationships of those around them and I found this book to be the same way. I imagine that if I were to write down my own life story or recount what recall at the time of my death, I probably would do the same too. But I guess I also recognize that in the time and place of where Ana Maria lived, women likely were conditioned to primarily focus on their family and manage the family etc. so in some sense, they are primed to place much more significance on this topic. By just considering the focus of her recalling the events of her life, it sort of gives rise to a broader conversation about the positions and roles of women at that time and place.

Question: Which character in the novel stood out to you the most and why was it Maria Griselda? Just kidding please let me know who it is and why.